christiangamer

Xbox LIVE is not a game; it’s Xbox’s online gaming service and its great; mostly. LIVE comes in 2 flavors; Silver and Gold…

SILVER: Silver is absolutely free; provided you bought a 360 and have it hooked to a broadband connection (Cable, DSL, maybe satellite – no dial-up). It comes with everything that Gold comes with EXCEPT the most important feature: online multiplayer gaming. You can do things like download stuff: demos, arcade games, gamer pictures and themes. You can even rent movies and TV shows; some even appearing in High Definition. You can have a friends list, send messages (text and voice), and MSN messenger is now integrated into the dashboard so all your fellow co-workers can see you playing games on your day off while they’re at the office! Good times! But it does fall a bit short if you are any sort of multiplayer fan. So it’s probably time to cough up another 50 dollars for:

GOLD: This is what you buy if you want to play your games online. 50 bucks isn’t cheap; but it lasts a full year. Relatively speaking, the price isn’t as bad as it sounds since you COULD pay 15 dollars a month for one game such as World of Warcraft; and here you get all of the multiplayer games on 360 for one flat fee per year. Also worth mentioning is that the service itself has had a very good record for working properly. Its had bad days, but they don’t happen often.

THE BAD NEWS: Sounds good up to this point, doesn’t it? Unfortunately there is one major issue and quite a few mostly non-ideal ways to compensate for it. The issue is not the service. The issue is other gamers. In all my life; in all the gas-station bathroom graffiti, all the high school locker rooms, and all the potty-talk I have ever heard in movies – I have never heard anything like what I’ve heard over voice chat in an Xbox LIVE game. There has never been a more potentially abhorrently vulgar place for young ears than Xbox LIVE. I HATE saying that; because if it weren’t for that issue I would recommend it to everyone because it’s a great service. Swearing, racism, rampant pervasive sexual crudeness, unfriendly trash-talk, and threats are all easy possibilities for your average evening online. I was recently playing with my friends against another team in Call of Duty 4. I had apparently irritated one of our opponents because, well, I got him. He began to swear and shout at me in the next lobby as we waited for the next match to begin. A friend of mine spoke up in my defense and asked him to stop – and the guy just lost it. He then threatened my friend in ways that would get him thrown into jail if said in the real world; involving the rape and murder of my friend and his family. This is by far the worst thing I’ve ever heard, and is the rarest form of Xbox LIVE insanity – but it exists. It is my opinion that you cannot allow your children to enter this environment unless you get some serious control over it, which is possible, but only if you know what to do.

WHAT YOU CAN DO: You can still allow your kids to play online (which is up to you), but you need to know the tools available for their protection.

1. Xbox 360 has a feature that limits voice chat to friendlist-only chat; or you can simply turn chat off. The downside is if you are playing a strategy-oriented team game, and some on your team are not on your friends list, you can’t communicate with them. Still this is the absolute best way to avoid LIVE verbal assault, without completely pulling the plug. By the way – if you simply unplug the headset from the controller, the 360 senses that and will direct the voice chat to come through the main speakers; and you probably don’t want that. Listening to swearing in surround-sound is not advised…

2. You can mute unruly players so you never have to hear them again by viewing their gamercard in-game and selecting mute. This is what I do personally when playing with friends against non-friends. Problem is, the nastiness has already been done by the time I get to muting said unruly players. Also the method to do this in-game is kind of clunky and takes time to accomplish; so it is not the most fun or efficient thing to have to do. And then there are times when there is more than one knucklehead in the game; and that’s a lot of work to mute them all.

3. You can review and avoid a player by visiting their gamercard and submitting a player review. Theoretically you will not get into any matches with them again. I’m really not sure how effective this is, but I haven’t seen that threatening fellow since we all gave him some negative feedback that evening.

4. You can contact Microsoft (my friend did) and report a serious issue. They will apparently tell you that they’ll watch said player and see if they need to take action; but that’s about all they will tell you. I sincerely hope that they think of some more realistic and effective ways to deal with the issues.

5. The family settings of the 360 itself allow parents to limit the ratings level that your child is allowed to play (M, T, E). If you don’t want your child playing M rated games – make it so! I’ve heard nasties in teen rated games as well as in M rated games online, however, so this is definitely not fool-proof.

6. The family settings also allow you to set limits on time played each day as well. Afraid your kid will get up at 3am and venture into vulgarity with his friends online? Tell the 360 not to let him. It seems harsh, but it’s your call, by all means necessary protect your family!

7. The power of a good friends list is not easily thwarted by jerks. As long as your kid has real friends on LIVE, this will be easy. If they are always playing with people they know there is much less chance of nastiness. Personally, however, I only have 10 or so people I know in real-life that play on LIVE that behave themselves, and that I can trust. Most of the people on my friends list are nice folks that I have met on LIVE, but I know nothing more than that about them. Scary possibilities, eh? Make sure your child does not engage in talk about personal info on Xbox LIVE (not really much different than myspace, or any other social-yet-anonymous online space).

8. Some of the worst mouths I have heard were on people who sounded like kids. Know that just because your kid says that he’s playing with other kids, that those other kids can be just as scary as adults.

9. In the home option = Don’t underestimate strategic placement of the 360. Yank it and the TV out of his or her room if you feel that the rules won’t be obeyed. It will look nicer on that big TV and sound nicer on the surround in the living room anyway.

I love Xbox LIVE. I hate the talk of some of its lower denizens. I want parents to know what it’s like and be prepared to battle against the hordes of potty-mouths online. I have had matches full of blissful teamwork-oriented chatter, and I have had matches full of verbal abuse that makes some R-rated movies look like Disney films.

BOTTOM LINE:

Parents: Be careful out there. The pseudo-anonymous nature of Xbox LIVE is apparently too irresistible for the immature gamers of the world. There is a terribly good chance that something nasty will be heard online…

EDIT – I changed the title from merely a review to a guide, which better describes the article’s focus…